Enlarged contexts of learning in
pre-primary education for
professional teacher’s development
Learning in enlarged contexts to promove learnfare
Author: Chiara Urbani
Dottorato in Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione, Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia,
955993@stud.unive.it chiara.urbani@email.it
Abstract:
Today professional development in pre-primary education can be supported by integrated relationships emerging from enlarged contexts of learning. It allows to generate new teachers’ competences and support new pedagogical and educational strategy of learnfare. The teacher’s reflexive and transformative competence, emerging by social (parental and intergenerational) interacting and professional (community of practice) context, supports capabilities development and qualifies a new participatory idea of pre-primary education.
Key words:
Enlarged contexts of learning in
pre-primary education for
professional teacher’s development
Learning in enlarged contexts to promove learnfare
Abstract:
Today professional development in pre-primary education can be supported by integrated relationships emerging from enlarged contexts of learning. It allows to generate new teachers’ competences and support new pedagogical and educational strategy of learnfare. The teacher’s reflexive and transformative competence, emerging by social (parental and intergenerational) interacting and professional (community of practice) context, supports capabilities development and qualifies a new participatory idea of pre-primary education.
Key words:
Professional development, pre-primary education, enlarged contexts of learning.
Pre-primary education and enlarged contexts of learning
Today pre-primary education represents a strategic field to employ a new citizenship
right based on learning (learnfare)
1and well-defined on the agency of subjects in the
definition of social good (active welfare)
2.
The educational boundaries of pre-primary school enlarged to include and integrate
multiple education agencies, social institutions and local stakeholders (corporations,
associations and groups involved) to take advantage from communities and parental or
intergenerational network.
Promoting this new vision requires a capacity of educational governance applied on the
entirety of educational experiences
3to which the teaching function is called to give
answers.
(1) Margiotta U. (2012) explains how development of individual empowerment allows the subject to partecipate actively to the economic, social and political life of his country.
(2) Costa M. (2012b) says that welfare represents a strategic framework to think about the concept of development within which to coniugate both freedom and human responsability through the primacy of the subject and his fulfillment project.
(3) Orsi M., in A scuola senza zaino. Il metodo del curricolo globale per una scuola comunità, p.19, describes the Global Curriculum method (Curricolo Globale), applied in the many “Senza Zaino” projects in experimentation all around Italy: this represents an innovation in planning and organization approach
Therefore, teachers find themself to govern and value these new enlarged contexts of
learning according to a greater flexibilization and personalization of educational paths
(COM 2020), with an enhancement of parenting (OCSE-Euridyce 2009) and a new
sociality called to contribute to the definition of educational services (IRER, 2004).
The enlarged system of education: consequences on teacher’s
professionality
Teachers, whose training in entry lacks a unique European perspective, can now give
shape to their professional action valueing the transformation and interaction processes,
in the sphere of interdipendence between the boundaries of the school and the informal
network of education (especially parental and intergenerational).
The enlarged contexts of learning become the space in which the teacher can and must
give shape and quality to professional development, as required by the European
Community (COM 2007) and underlined by european and international research
(eTwinning 2011, starting from OECD-TALIS). The teacher is called to provide
stability and awareness to the actions that arise from social and personal experiences of
the new enlarged contexts, highlighting the need for development policies of the
teaching profession able to leverage the capabilities
4.
The impact on professional development: the dimensions
The challenge to educational research concerns the regard of all those contextual and
relational implicit elements emerging from the processes of social interaction. This
challenge also applies to the vocational education curriculum: the capacity to operate in
the integrated system of education is developed through a qualified support, capable of
systematically linking practices, reflexivity and motivational inducement, expecting
functional devices of multidimensional regarding to the social, professional and
personal sphere (Eisenschmidt 2006).
Empowerment of professional development needs a definition of policies centred on the
centrality of capabilities that are able, for example, to: encourage the creation of
communities of practice (Wenger 2009, L. Cuddapah, D. Clayton 2011) in a dialogue of
intra-extra-curricular partners, which is based on interactive multi-identity; strenghten
the reflectivity (Striano 2001, Fabbri 2008) as a function of transformational learning
(Mezirow 2000, Kitchenham 2008), even throught the assistance of figures like
counselors; recognize and value the new competences acquired in the enlarged
interaction between educational settings, learning environments and extra-school
network.
of the school environment like we can desume from these words:"the planning is planning of the educational environment".
(4) Costa M. (2012b) refers to "learnfare of capabilities" as right to lifelong learning in function of the capabilities’ development for the functionings’ realization . Capabilities, such as by theoretical paradigm of A. Sen, are the set of relational resources available to a person, combined with its ability to benefit from it and then use it operationally. In this perspective, the teacher’s competence loses the value of performance and becomes "competence to act" (agency).
Conclusions
Developing new capabilities qualificates the reflexivity of professional acting as a
choice of realization and discovery, starting from the new methods and forms of
interaction/interpretation/processing that are the basis of enlarged contexts of education.
The development of teacher professionality becomes the guarantee of construction of
new "bridges" of meaning and educational action between living environments, from
which to gain those implicit elements of individual agency beyond the multi-identity. A
bridge that becomes generative (Costa, 2004), able to improve a learnfare of capabilities
within which reconstructs professional identities and new paths in pre-primary
education.
References:
‐ ANNALI PUBBLICA AMMINISTRAZIONE (2008), Sviluppo Professionale degli
insegnanti, Periodici Le Monnier, Firenze.
‐ COMMISSIONE EUROPEA (2009), Rapporto Eurydice, Educazione e cura della prima
infanzia in Europa: ridurre le disuguaglianze sociali e culturali, Agenzia esecutiva per
l’istruzione, gli audiovisivi e la cultura, Bruxelles.
‐ COMUNICAZIONE DELLA COMMISSIONE EUROPA 2020, Una strategia per una
crescita intelligente, sostenibile e inclusiva, COM (2010a) 2020 definitivo. Bruxelles,
3.3.2010. Web:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2010:2020:FIN:IT:PDF.
‐ COMMISSIONE EUROPEA, UNITÀ EUROPEA E-TWINNING (2011). eTwinning
Report. Sviluppo professionale degli insegnanti: uno studio sulla pratica attuale, in: http://www.etwinning.net/shared/data/etwinning/booklet/eTwinning_report_2010/IT_eTw inning_Report_2011.pdf
‐ COSTA M. (2012a), Criticità e opportunità di sviluppo professionale del docente nei
primi anni di carriera in Italia, in Formazione & Insegnamento, Vol. 3 (pp. 42-58).
‐ COSTA M. (2012b), Agency Formativa per il nuovo learnfare, in: Formazione e Insegnamento, Rivista del Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni culturali dell’ Università Ca’Foscari, Venezia.
‐ EISENSHMIDT E. (2006), Novice teachers as members of professional learning
communities, In: Education-line: European Conference on Educational Research,
University of Geneva, 13-15 September 2006. Leeds: University of Leeds, 2006, 1 - 11. ‐ FABBRI L. (2008), Il genitore riflessivo. La costruzione narrativa del sapere e delle
pratiche genitoriali, Rivista Italiana di Educazione Familiare, n. 1 - 2008, pp. 45-55.
‐ IRER (2004), I servizi educativi per la prima infanzia a carattere innovativo, Consiglio Regionale della Lombardia, Milano.
‐ KITCHENHAM A. (2008), The Evolution of John Mezirow’s Transformative Learning
Theory, Journal of Transformative Education, University of Northern British Columbia
Press, April 2008, 6: 104-123.
‐ L. CUDDAPAH J., D.CLAYTON C. (2011), Using Wenger's Communities of Practice to
Explore a New Teacher Cohort, Journal of Teacher Education, American Association of
Colleges for Teacher Education, SAGE, Baltimora, 62:62 in:
http://jte.sagepub.com/content/62/1/62.
‐ MARGIOTTA U. (2012), Educazione e formazione dopo la crisi del welfare, in Baldacci M., Frabboni F., Margiotta U., Longlife/Longwide learning. Per un Trattato Europeo della
Formazione, Bruno Mondadori Editore, Milano.
‐ MEZIROW J. (1998), Learning as transformation. Critical perspectives on a theory in
progress, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco CA 2000, tr. it. Apprendimento e trasformazione. Il significato dell’esperienza e il valore della riflessione
nell’apprendimento degli adulti, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano 2009.
‐ MIUR (2012), Indicazioni nazionali per il curricolo della scuola dell’infanzia e del primo ciclo d’istruzione, Roma, 4 settembre 2012.
‐ OECD (2009), Early Childhood Education and Care, in: Education Today: the OECD Perspective, OECD 2009. Tr. it. Capitolo 1. Educazione e cura della prima infanzia, in Education Today: the OECD Perspective, OECD.
‐ OECD (2010), Development an analysis of teachers’ professional development based on the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Office for Official Publications of the European Union, Luxembourg.
‐ OECD (2011), Building a High-Quality Teaching Profession. Office for Official
‐ ORSI M.( 2006), A scuola senza zaino. Il metodo del curricolo globale per una scuola
comunità, Centro Studi Erickson, Milano.
‐ SEN A. (1999), Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press; tr. it. Lo sviluppo è
libertà. Perchè non c’è crescita senza democrazia, Mondadori, Milano 2000 (2012).
‐ STRIANO M. (2001), La razionalità riflessiva nell’agire educativo, Liguori Editore, Napoli.
‐ WENGER E. (1998), Communities of practice. Learning, meaning and identity, Cambridge University Press, tr. it. Comunità di pratica. Apprendimento, significato e
